Latimer's Law (14 page)

“Yeah, heck of a storm last night. Which brings me to an important question for you.” Marsh put the coffee on the counter, and the hipster punched it into the cash register. Marsh reached for the fabled twofer, twin candy bars he didn’t want—his gut was still letting him have it about all the rye—and put them on the counter, as well.

“For me?” The clerk grinned again and pointed to Marsh’s total, glowing green on the register’s display.

“Yeah. I have this girlfriend, and I haven’t been able to get hold of her since...oh, I guess it was about this time yesterday. She was coming here, I think, to pick up some stuff before she went to work. Maybe you saw her. After that storm, I’m kind of worried about her.” There, thought Marsh, that had to be the right note to strike with this kid. He looked at that scruffy little beardlet, clinging to the underside of the kid’s chin like mildew, and felt rage boiling anew at the thought that Abby had perhaps done something with the kid. Something she shouldn’t. Something she hadn’t done with Marsh.

Now the hipster looked right at Marsh, honest concern written in his clear brown eyes. “Wow, man, that doesn’t sound good. What’s your girlfriend look like?”

What Marsh wanted to say was “She’s beautiful, but she was in love with my brother when she should have been in love with me. Now she’s mine, and I’m going to find her and bring her home where she belongs. And you’d better not lie to me, you little jerk. I’ll know it if you do.”

What Marsh said was “Oh, about five-five, slender, light brown hair with blond streaks in it, gray eyes. Pretty.”

“Yeah, she was here, buying chili and potato chips and juice, other stuff. I remember her. She comes in every now and then. Nice lady.”

Marsh clenched his fists and put them below the counter, where the kid couldn’t see. “Did you see her leave?”

The kid nodded, and pointed to Marsh’s total again. Marsh grimaced and dug for his wallet. “Yeah, she drove off.”

“She...drove.” It was a napalm news flash.

“Yeah. Big old red pickup truck.” The beardlet rippled a little as the kid nodded.

Marsh carefully counted out three dollar bills. “Was she alone?” He thought the studied indifference was just right. He didn’t care, no. He was just asking. Just...asking. Just curious. Just a welfare check on someone he cared about.

“No, there was that guy. I figured he’d be driving again, since he drove in, but it was her behind the wheel, kinda in a hurry.”

Marsh fumbled the coins the hipster put in his hand. They went everywhere, rolling across the floor, spinning, ringing loudly, the only sound he could hear except for his own brain sizzling.

Abigail was not alone. She was with another man, in a truck.

Marsh couldn’t think. The store around him seemed to pulse like an obscenely inflated balloon.

“Whoa, you lost a quarter—over there.” The hipster pointed.

“Which way did they go?” Marsh followed the quarter, trying to hide his clenching fists and reddening face from the fool behind the register. The words felt as if he had dragged them up from the depths of the earth, in a place where lava seethed and bubbled and melted everything it touched.

“Right there, by the potato chip rack—”

Marsh whipped up from where he had bent to pick up the quarter. “The truck. Which. Way. Did the truck. Go?”

“Oh.” Marsh saw the beard again, in all its under-chin glory, stubbly and thin and patchy, as the kid tilted his head back, gesturing. “East. Toward the interstate, I guess.”

The world began to dim around Marsh. He recognized the red rage he sometimes felt, the need to strike something, to set it right with violence. He went out the door, ignoring the kid’s stupid, pointless bleating.

“Hey, man, don’t you want your stuff? Your coffee?”

The interstate. A big old red pickup truck.

Marsh got behind the wheel of his silver Honda and headed east.

Chapter 9

I
t was all noise. Noise, and light. Noise, light and confusion. Abby turned onto her back and flung her forearm over her eyes to shut out the hot yellow glare from the motel window.

Motel window.

She sat bolt upright in the unfamiliar bed and then scrabbled for the sheets when she realized she was naked.

He was naked, too. Very naked, and doing something with a rustling plastic bag. That was the noise, that and the clink of metal against metal. She turned her head to look for its source and saw Mort with his head in a dish, crunching kibble with every appearance of relish.

Abby’s stomach gave a long, loud growl in sympathy.

Cade, naked, glorious Cade, turned to look at her and a grin split his asymmetrical face. “I’m working on it, Abby. How does dry cereal and bad black motel-room coffee sound?”

“Heavenly.” She smiled back, but then her bladder demanded her attention. “Er—excuse me while I... Could you maybe turn your back?”

Cade’s grin turned into a lascivious smile that was nothing short of a proposition. He sauntered unabashedly to the bed, placed a hand on each side of her hips while she clutched the sheets to her chest and told her, “Nope.” Then he kissed her.

He kissed her slowly; he kissed her thoroughly; he kissed her as if he had nothing he would rather do for the rest of his life. He touched nothing but her mouth, and when he had finished Abby could only stare into his eyes, feeling her lips throb and fighting the urge to lick his taste from them, catch and savor every last molecule. Cade’s eyes really were
that blue.
They bore a certain sleepy, self-satisfied look—almost smugness—that nevertheless pleased her, for she knew she was the cause of it.

She was also, apparently, the cause of the erection that was lifting well past half-mast at his hips. He followed her gaze and one corner of his mouth quirked upward.

“Don’t mind that. It’ll settle down after a while.”

“Er. If you say so. Cade, I need to use the restroom.”

He levered himself away. “Far be it from me to interfere with a woman’s bladder.”

When he turned back to the cereal, Abby fled for the bathroom, closing the door on his murmured, “Nice ass,” with her face flaming. She emerged ten minutes later, having resigned herself to wriggling into her chilly panties and the chambray shirt—both damp. The jeans were still dripping slowly from their hems and waistband, and reluctantly she hung them back over the shower rod to continue drying.

Cade was in the bed, sheets pulled up to his waist, she saw with relief. He had a cup of coffee in each hand and an open box of granola lay near his knee. Abby approached the bed shyly and perched on the edge, reaching to accept the coffee he held out to her. She decided to brazen out his knowing smile.

“You’ll catch cold, outside the covers like that. I’m betting your clothes are still damp.”

“You’d be right.” She took a tentative sip of the coffee, and then a deeper gulp. It wasn’t so hot that it burned, but it felt good as it went down her throat. It had been more than twenty-four hours since the last cup, surely. She looked around for a clock but could find only the watch on Cade’s wrist. She craned her neck to look and gasped. “Is it really two in the afternoon?”

“Guess we needed the rest.” Cade dug into the box of granola, and Abby’s stomach announced its needs again.

“Two p.m. I don’t think I’ve ever slept so late in my life.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever had the kind of day you had yesterday, either. Eat some cereal. I’m sorry I don’t have something more, but it’s easy camping food. I don’t want you fainting with hunger—we have things to do.”

“Like what?” Abby scooped a handful of nutty oat clusters from the box and began to munch.

“Like walk the dog, find some real coffee and maybe some protein, and pay for another night here since we slept past checkout time.”

Abby felt herself flushing again. “Cade, I—”

He interrupted her with a lifted hand, and she was riveted by those blue eyes once more. “If you’re going to talk about how much you regret what we did last night—this morning, rather—don’t. Because I don’t have a single ounce of regret, Abby. In fact—” he gestured to his covered lap “—I’d be more than willing to repeat that activity. Just say the word.”

“I don’t regret it, either, but, Cade—” She faltered, unable to form her flickering thoughts into coherent sentences. Yesterday had been a day out of time, a day so fresh and raw it could never be repeated. Now it was a new day, and as Cade said, there were things to do, but they weren’t the things he had listed. First she had to apologize yet again for what she’d done, and persuade him not to press charges if she would reimburse him for expenses and time lost.

She didn’t want to think about where or how she could get the money. She could write a check and perhaps hide the check register for a few days, but eventually there would be trouble. She could not imagine explaining yesterday to Marsh, much less what she had done with Cade only a few hours ago.

Unless you really do make that break, Abby.

Perhaps the problem was more that she
could
imagine the explanation. She was paralyzed by the prospect of the confrontation, Marsh’s terrifying and certainly physical reaction. She felt sick to her stomach, despite her hunger, at the thought of the beating. Mixed with the fear was the blinding exhilaration of the idea that she could just keep running, walk away from everything the way she’d thought in the shower last night. The whole mad balance was tipped by the elephant of guilt at leaving the people in her care behind. Hot tears threatened and she turned her face aside, but not before a drop welled and spilled.

“Hey.
Hey.
” There was a click as he set his cup aside, and then the rustling of the sheets. He took her coffee away, setting the cup next to his before pulling her easily into his arms. “Don’t do that. You don’t have to do that, not here, not with me.”

“I can’t help it.” She turned her face into his throat to hide. “I’m just...”

“Afraid, I know.”

Cade was a
man,
and her recent experience of men left a blackened crater where comfort should have been. But here he was, a near stranger, busily proving her wrong. He smelled so good. With her nose pressed to the hollow of his throat, his skin smelled soapy and warm, with a musk of sex and sweat. How a man could smell safe she didn’t know, but Cade did. As her nose and cheek brushed blindly over his skin like a kitten seeking a nipple, she felt goose bumps rise, and his hold tightened. That muscular grip should have frightened her, but instead it made her turn her face up so her mouth was waiting when his descended. Probably Cade would see this as buying his forbearance with sex, but she couldn’t resist. She wanted the comfort and the sweet oblivion that came with making love.

* * *

Cinched with his spare belt and generously cuffed at the hems, a clean pair of his jeans didn’t look too bad on Abby’s curves. Cade liked the way his shirt—a plaid flannel—positioned its buttoned pocket flaps at the peaks of her breasts. He could visualize the soft mounds beneath the fabric, the rose-taupe nipples.

And the bruises.

He scowled and turned away so she wouldn’t see his face except obliquely. Abby was tucking the tail of the shirt into the jeans and blousing it, watching her reflection in the dull finish of the cheap mirror screwed to the wall above the dresser.

Mort waited patiently at the door, tongue out in his doggy smile, tail half-lifted. Afternoon light glowed at the edges of the curtains and sent a prism over the carpet from the peephole in the door. While Abby sat on the bed and laced her feet into her still-damp sneakers, Cade quickly checked his small duffel and made sure his gun was secured. He would lock it into the back of the truck with Mort while he and Abby ate.

“What are you hungry for, babe?” He turned, the duffel in his hands. Again the endearment slipped out before he thought to censor it.

Her slow smile, half-sleepy and satiated, nearly made him put the duffel back on the dresser and tumble her back onto the mattress. “Food.”

“You think you could manage something more specific?” He cleared his throat and swallowed hard. He felt himself harden, but a quick mental memory replay of booking an ugly dope dealer into the county jail calmed things down.

She pointed to the pile of damp, wrinkled cash on the dresser. “Whatever that’ll buy. I owe you, Cade. I owe you a
lot.
Much more than I have.”

He felt the
aw, shucks, ma’am
rising to his lips, and smiled instead. “I think we can eat real good for that. Ready?”

Abby got to her feet. “Starving.”

“I’ll drive, though.”

Cade was rewarded by her laugh, rich and genuine without a hint of nervousness or fear.

Micanopy’s live-oak-shaded streets were sleepy and hot in the late afternoon, and to the west, thunderheads were building. Kids on bikes zipped across the road in front of the truck, causing Mort to woof briefly from the back. Cade knew the town from previous enforcement visits, and followed turn after turn till he arrived at an out-of-the-way building perched on a weathered gray dock at the edge of a sea of sawgrass. In wet years, a lake flooded the area, but this late in the summer the lake had shrunk far out into its bed, leaving cracked greenish muck behind. A few cars were parked on the oyster-shell lot. Cade chose a spot in the shade, where the sinking sun would continue to miss the truck, saw to Mort’s comfort with a little kibble and some water, and came around to where Abby waited, hands thrust into the pockets of the baggy jeans.

Country music spilled from the building as he tucked her hand into the bend of his elbow and led her up the sloping wharf. He could smell the sun-warmed creosote of the fat pilings, and listened to the creak and pop of the silvered boards beneath their feet.

“Best catfish in Florida,” he said. “Or alligator tail, if you’d rather.”

Inside, the smell of hot grease, grilled meat and fish nearly sent him to his knees, and from Abby’s little moan, he knew she felt the same. His stomach growled in response. The hostess, a cheery girl in shorts and a T-shirt with the restaurant’s logo on it, met them with menus and a smile.

“Deputy Latimer!” she said. “Long time no see.” Her smile faltered the smallest bit as her eyes drifted over the scar, which he hadn’t had last time he was in the place.

“Howdy, ma’am.” He smiled at the hostess and touched a nonexistent hat brim. “It has been a while, hasn’t it? Table for two? Maybe that one, by the window?”

Abby’s hand had tightened in his elbow. He didn’t look down at her—he could feel her gaze, narrowed and speculative, on him. Yeah, he’d cuffed her and held a gun on her, but he’d hidden most of the details of his rank and job in order to control what she knew about him, while he pried her story out of her.
Everybody’s got their secrets in this game.

He saw Abby into her booth seat with a gentlemanly flourish, then sat opposite her where he could keep an eye on his truck under the moss-hung oaks, and Mort’s muzzle poking out the back hatch. The hostess’s smile was still uncertain, as she adjusted to his changed status and unattractive, even frightening, appearance.

“Something to drink?”

“Two beers, whatever’s on tap,” Cade replied. Then he thought about what Abby might think of him, commandeering her preferences as though he had a right to do so, and said, “Unless you’d rather have something else?”

“Beer is fine,” Abby dismissed. She opened her menu as the hostess turned away.

Cade looked at her studious disregard of him, and sighed. “Let’s just get it over with.”

“I think I had a right to know you’re actually a deputy. Isn’t that...part of my basic rights as a prisoner?”

“As if you have any right to dictate terms.” He grinned to soften his words.

“I think you forfeited your right to judge me once you decided not to take me to jail. And now the...the sex has complicated the matter.”

The two beers arrived, delivered by a college-aged kid with wiry hair and glasses, who followed up by tucking the tray under his arm and getting out his order pad and a pen. “Ready to order?” His eyes skittered over Cade’s scar and moved to Abby’s face. Nice of the kid not to stare, though Cade understood he wanted to.

“I would like the fried catfish platter.” Abby closed her menu and slid it to the edge of the table.

“I’ll have the twelve-ounce steak, medium rare, and a baked potato with all the fixings.”

“Got it.” With a grin, the kid was gone.

Cade stuck his hand out across the table. Abby took it, bemused. “Let’s just start this dance over. Cade Latimer, at your service. I’m a K-9 deputy with the Marion County Sheriff’s Department. And for the record...the sex was great.”

Abby flushed bright red to the roots of her hair. “Don’t try to change the subject.”

He shifted their handshake to a more gentle grasp, lacing his fingers with hers. “I meant what I said, but I see your point. And you?”

“Abby McMurray. Adult day care center operator, and car thief.”

“Former car thief.”

“Sure, okay.” She pulled her fingers from his and drank a deep swallow of her beer. “You know, I’m still wondering why you didn’t just haul me off to jail.”

“I was curious, and you were—” A grin crooked at the side of his mouth. “You were sexy, and you just didn’t seem like the type to go joyriding in someone else’s beater truck. I had to know.”

The waiter returned with a basket of soda crackers and a dish of butter pats perched on ice, and was gone again. Three minutes later he was back with small dishes of coleslaw, bright with flecks of red cabbage and carrot, and glossy with dressing. Cade and Abby fell on the salad like ravening wolves. The waiter hardly had a chance to reach the kitchen again before the dishes were empty.

Abby pushed away her bowl slowly. He watched her count forks and leave the sticky slaw fork in the bowl. Her mouth tightened the slightest bit, and he knew he was in for an interrogation. Funny, which of her mannerisms he’d homed in on, and how quickly.